Urban agriculture in Kampala: Indigenous adaptive response to the economic crisis

Agricultural production within African cities has become an increasingly important practice as urban households have adapted to the economic hardships of the past decade. In Kampala, as in many East African cities, important constraints limit urban agriculture—institutional obstacles that block access to underutilized urban land, as well as both municipal bylaws that suppress urban agriculture, and urban officials’ views of the practice which range from indifference to hostility. Those bylaws and views are based on generalizations about urban agriculture, most of which are shown, here to be misleading or false. Altering the legal status of urban farming and providing access to underutilized land could have important implications for the food security of urban households.

Key words:

• Urban agriculutre
• food security
• informal sector
• Uganda
• East Africa